Howrah is not a particularly pleasant place. Not by day and certainly not by night. It is comprised of factories, tanneries, godowns and the occasional dwelling, and is populated in part by the sort of cut-throats who in previous eras might have made jolly fine pirates. If there existed a silver lining, it was that, given my state of dress, no dacoit with any degree of self-respect would think to try and rob me. Indeed in that regard, Howrah was probably safer for me than anywhere in Calcutta proper.
Yet I had to keep going. I had to make contact with Sam. With Gulmohamed gone, I now had nowhere else to turn. The question was how? Our lodgings in Premchand Boral Street would be under surveillance, and no doubt my parents’ residence in Shyambazar too. But my first concern was how to cross the Hooghly back into the city.
The simplest means would be to traverse the bridge near the station. It also had the advantage of being free, which in my current impecunious circumstances was a most definite attraction. But it was also extremely risky. The bridge was one of the most strategic points in the whole city. With the chaos in North Calcutta, the military would have it heavily guarded, restricting access and checking the papers of anyone trying to cross. Even if I were not immediately recognised as a fugitive, the chances of them allowing a shoeless itinerant, which is what most I resembled, to cross into the city in the middle of the night seemed low. As for the passenger ferries, they would have stopped sailing by the time I reached the water’s edge.
That left the small boats, the naukas, operated by men who ate and slept on their wooden vessels. Unrestricted by timetables, they could sail at any time of day or night, for an appropriate fee of course, and they had the advantage of being able to berth almost anywhere along the other riverbank, though it might involve wading up to your knees in mud. I would never normally consider hiring one of these contraptions, but tonight, even the thought of making it through the slime of the opposite bank was as nothing compared to my need to reach safety.
I walked south. Away from the bridge to a quieter, more secluded spot where a few such boats rocked gently at the end of a jetty. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the one-rupee note I’d charged the Englishman back at the station. It was a lot to pay for crossing the river, but I hoped a rupee would buy not only passage but a lack of questions also.
I chose the nauka that bobbed furthest from the centre and made my way gingerly down a riverbank treacherous with mud and detritus. A shaft of light speared through a hole in the sacking that acted as both door and screen to the tiny covered compartment at the stern.
I stood close by and shouted. ‘Oh dada! Jaben?’
From inside came the clanging of metal vessels. A hand lifted the sackcloth and a face, gaunt and bristled, peered out.
‘Kothai?’ he said. Where?
The Armenian ghat was the nearest landing on the opposite bank but that seemed rather too close to the bridge for my comfort. A more propitious spot would be somewhere further downriver, ideally near the Outram ghat, but that was quite a distance and I didn’t want to chance my luck. Between Armenian and Outram was the ghat at Fairlie Place. It would have to do.
‘Oi-tho,’ I said, ‘Fairlie ghat.’
He pondered it for a moment. ‘Fairlie? Athho ratheer-é?’ As though shocked that anyone would seek to go there at this time of night.
I sensed the beginning of a negotiation and headed it off with a flourish of the one-rupee note. ‘Ak tākā.’
It brought the matter to a prompt conclusion.
‘Cholō,’ he said with a nod, then came out onto the deck and held out a hand to help steady my embarkation.
The boatman returned to the stern, levered all of his meagre body weight onto the oversized oar that jutted from the rear, and pushed off from the bank. Ahead lay a half-hour journey across the ink-black river. I had never crossed so late at night before, nor in a vessel so close to the waterline, and it soon became apparent that traversing the Hooghly in such a craft was far more dangerous than taking a ferry, especially in the dead of night. The lip of the boat was mere inches from the water, and indeed I could have reached over and touched the surface had I been so inclined. Furthermore we had no navigation lights, were all but invisible save for a hurricane lamp at the bow, and dodging seagoing cargo ships in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. One slip of the oar or miscalculation of the current and a freighter might crack our hull like an egg, sailing over us without even noticing.
But the man knew the waters and guided his vessel expertly between the wakes of towering steel hulls and eventually the concrete jetty of Fairlie ghat loomed out of the darkness. I scoured the bank for signs of activity, for a police or military presence, but it appeared splendidly deserted.
The boat-wallah steered his nauka towards it, angling the boat so that it arrived at the platform with the gentlest of kisses. I thanked him, paid him his rupee and jumped off.
The night air was still, with only the faintest hint of charred smoke carried on the riverine breeze. From here it was hard to believe that the city was in chaos, and that a few miles away, shops and houses and people were burning.
The issue was where to go now. I had to speak to Sam, but going back to our digs in Premchand Boral Street was out of the question. Yet there was one way to get hold of him, one place I could meet him without the police, secret or otherwise, finding out. I just needed to reach it without being arrested.
I kept my head down and set off for Rawdon Street.